~ Perspective from Vancouver

City Reputations – Vancouver #9

The Reputation Institute gets a lot of attention when it publishes results like this, whether it’s companies, countries or as in this case — cities.

City RepTrak® is a global survey based on more than 22,000 consumer ratings, collected in the G8 countries, which ranks the world’s 55 most reputable cities based on levels of trust, esteem, admiration and respect. Perceptions are then grouped into three dimensions: Advanced Economy, Effective Government and Appealing Environment. Cities with strong reputations are perceived positively in all three dimensions.

What value is there in this ranking? Aside from a chance to see ourselves as others see us. Well, according to Forbes:

The World’s Most Reputable Cities: There is a direct link between a city’s reputation and people’s willingness to visit, work and live there. By focusing on reputation drivers, cities can improve their reputation scores and benefit from increased support from their stakeholders.”

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19 thoughts on “City Reputations – Vancouver #9”

I didn’t look at the full report, so don’t know how many people they polled and how the study was conducting / rating achieved.

For myself personally, though Copenhagen is bike-friendly and liveable in terms of close proximity to services, businesses, even the airport and walkability/safety, I personally felt disconnected as an Asian-Canadian. I was there for 5 days and did bike around, tour on my own while my partner went to Velocity cycling conference 2010. Culturally it didn’t “speak” to me in terms of whole-hearted embracing multiculturalism in new art, any fusion interpretations of cuisine. Maybe I was looking in the wrong neighbourhoods. I enjoyed all the “old” /traditional stuff of Denmark culture and art, stuff that young Danes might yawn about.

While this blog focus is primarily about urban design, transportation and liveability, what also makes a city attractive is its daily dynamic drive, its diversity in its culture, interesting neighbourhoods worth visiting, constantly changing artistic expression, historic preservation, renewal and the city’s resilence to renew itself through recent disasters/events and social change reflected in its demographics.

Toronto has been for many more years than Vancouver, more open and vocal in its diverse voices. Its large diverse and bigger black communities add on a different vibe to the city, its neighbourhoods, culture and political dialogue. It makes Torontonians less afraid to tackle and talk loud about hard issues of social justice and race. This spills over into art and culture–visual, performing arts and literary works. It’s transformed culture and art because its uniquely Canadian, not just limited to “old country” traditional stuff.

Vancouver continues to be Canada’s Pacific Rim city reflected in its demographics, local dialogue, culture, history. The First Nations expression is much more dominant in every aspect in Vancouver … you to have to look harder in Toronto..both as a visitor and resident.

While various Toronto large ethnic neighbourhoods are becoming gentrified and hence, are becoming “less” recognizable with loss of some long-time small “ethnic” businesses, there is still some neighbourhoods that still have retained noticeable markers for Italian (several, downtown and suburbs), Chinese, Portuguese (where I used to live), Greek, Jewish (midtown, Bathurst- Lawrence West) and still worth visiting.

People may wonder what Canadian big cities could possibly offer against very old cities of Rome, Vienna, etc. with gorgeous historic architecture, public space and some pedestrian-bike friendly areas: Our diversity creates and offers diverse stimulation, choice, generates more ideas in different directions with a lot to learn ..if you want to as a visitor or as a resident.

Hi Jean: the survey covered 22,000 “consumers” in the G8 countries. Judging from the web site of the study’s authors (Reputation Institute), the survey’s selection and methodology is quite slanted towards the business community and its concerns.

Very true. Vancouver has never been a town for business. Logging, mining and real estate continue to be the primary businesses here. Vancouver even imports its yoghurt and many other foods. Vancouver is somewhat like Portland, OR. As the third city in Canada is does OK. If it tries to be anything then that would have to be called, a resort and retirement town for all strata of economic society. On the east we have the poorest of Canada and on the west side some of the wealthiest.

Never? That’s goofy. In fact, that’s not even true of Cuba (which prior to the failed, 1959 experiment was a middle-class society like Argentina and Chile and had a higher per-capita income than much of Europe).

Anyways, statscan reports that 2% of Metro workforce are in public administration, which may not include health-authority & social service staff, so maybe double that. The rest is all business.

Ask Pattison about that. For a long time, that was the largest privately held company in Canada (now, the 2nd).

Ken Ohrn, the poster of this story and of the comment I replied to suggests that the business community and its concerns are prominent in the study cited.

Whether we like it or not, business in Canada is primarily done in the cities where the head offices and the employees of them are. By every measure Vancouver ranks fourth and sometimes third.

Compared to other cities there is also very little heavy industry in metropolitan Vancouver. There is no auto, truck or bus manufacturing. No steel works. No locomotive or heavy engineering manufacturing. There is a small oil refinery but no chemical refining. Is there any plastics manufacturing? There is little food processing. Etc., etc, as I listed below. (a few posts down the list)

Statistics Canada:
Provincially, Ontario accounted for the largest number of head offices (1,084) and employees (94,549). This was followed by Quebec, with 568 head offices and 52,072 employees, and Alberta, with 395 head offices and 41,412 employees.

The BC tech sector, of which the Metro is the centre of the provincial universe, produces $12.5 billion for the national economy annually, 6.5% of the BC GDP (in the same ball park as mining, oil & gas and healthcare), and has higher than average earnings compared to the average of all industries. This according to a 2015 report from the BC Statistics Agency.

Then there is tourism and the Port. None of these require a concentrated head office cluster to make a very significant contribution.

Your data on Alberta seems to predate the current slow down due solely to lower world oil prices, an industry that Alberta manufacturing relies most heavily on. This is the great danger that over-reliance on raw resources imposes on an economy.

This is also relative to Alberta’s “head offices.” Well, most of them are related to multinational petroleum interests. Branch offices shouldn’t be conflated with head offices, just as foreign head offices do not want to build refineries in Canada and prefer to extract and export as quickly as possible with the Alberta government and the feds rolling out the red carpet to the mass export of jobs and fair return on the people’s resource. Note also the extraordinary office vacancy rate in Calgary at present.

The head office count is not a complete measure of the stability of an economy. Housing all five Canadian bank head offices (and a huge number of other financial institutions) in the GTA is a world away from housing multinational oil company subsidiaries in Calgary.

What a lovely old word that is. Hogwash. Do I detect a revival in usage?

Much as you decry the Statistics Canada reporting I provided, I feel you perhaps ought to consider the data a tad less subjectively.

Here’s another, specifically related to your preoccupation.
Forbes, through CBRE, in 2016 listed the top tech cities in North America. Toronto came in 12th with 179,200 employees. Vancouver squeezed in at the bottom, number 20, with 57,500 employees.

Statistics Canada reports that British Columbia produces 12.59% of the national economy. Alberta 16%, Québec 19%, Ontario 38%.
Oil and gas might be down but there’s still a chunk of difference.

Especially when we realise that:
Alberta’s economy was one of the strongest in the world, supported by the burgeoning petroleum industry and to a lesser extent, agriculture and technology. In 2013 Alberta’s per capita GDP exceeded that of the United States, Norway, or Switzerland, and was the highest of any province in Canada at C$84,390. This was 56% higher than the national average of C$53,870 and more than twice that of some of the Atlantic provinces. In 2006 the deviation from the national average was the largest for any province in Canadian history. According to the 2006 census, the median annual family income after taxes was $70,986 in Alberta (compared to $60,270 in Canada as a whole).

Alberta has no financial debt, with a 1.9% asset surplus over all net debt. Alberta is also the single richest jurisdiction per capita on the planet.

I’m sure that there are measures other than those employed by the Reputation Institute, featured in this article, in which Vancouver would excel.

One thing we do know is that when Canadian Pacific decided to move their head office out of Montreal, they went to Calgary. There, they joined such institutions as Safeway (30,00 employees), Shaw, Atco, Westjet, Corus, others including many energy companies.

You can provide simple lists and glowing statements until the hogs start to sing, but they don’t prove that Alberta’s economy possesses the attributes of genuine long term stability.

Alberta’s overall economy contracted by over 4% since the US and Middle East sheiks decided to create an artificial glut in oil in late 2013 and thus lower the world price. By comparison, BC’s more diversified economy budged slightly upwards and now has the best growth performance in the nation.

As the sole result of foreign influence in the world oil industry, Calgary’s economy experienced the highest contraction of all large cities in Canada, which is reflected in lower real estate benchmark prices and housing oversupply over the last two years. In addition, Calgary now has the distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the nation of any comparable city (10.3% by early December).

And then we have this from a Nov 2016 piece in the Huffington Post:

Real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield is ranking Calgary with Moscow, Houston, and Aberdeen, Scotland, as the “oil-centric cities” whose downtown office real estate markets have been hardest hit by the global oil price shock.
In a new report, it predicts the vacancy rate for downtown Calgary’s Class-A buildings – the best quality offices in the tallest buildings – will hit 27.5 per cent by the end of next year, the highest since the company began tracking numbers in 1985.

A downtown office vacancy rate of almost 30% in a city supposedly filled with more high-quality head offices than most cities. This puts simplistic head office counts into perspective.

Indeed without the massive influx of (primarily Asian) capital into real estate Vancouver and the rest of BC would not have had the success it had over the last 30 years. With this (mainly Asian) money comes house and condo price appreciation for many struggling (white, non-Asian) baby-boomers that now move their tax free house money to V Island, Kelowna or Sunshine Coast; with it comes money for car dealership, furniture stores, flower decorators and art dealers and with it comes vast employment in the construction industry as a $2M condo or $1.5M house reno doesn’t drop out of the sky but has to be created, i.e. jobs for city planners, architects, crane operators, painters, plumbers, realtors etc .. Take all this (Asian) money away and Vancouver and the rest of BC would be a far poorer place.

At first glance one can say their economy became more diversified, and indeed the government makes that claim. However, the dependence on higher world oil prices saturates everything, and any downturn in that price affects everything.

Source: Alberta Gov’t stats

Moreover, the halving of oil and gas as a component of GDP reflects as much the switch from cheaply-exploited fossil fuels to expensive as conventional sources depleted and the tar sands came on stream with higher prices. GDP does not directly measure the energy return on energy invested (much, much lower with energy-intensive tar sands production).

To maintain high growth, Alberta needs high world oil prices. But a number of factors may challenge the price, among them interest rate increases on debt-soaked US fracking companies, the high depletion rates in the five US shale formations (two of them will peak in about four years), carbon pricing on an international scale, mass production of cheap renewables, etc. Alberta may thrive now on high oil prices, but that doesn’t mean it can market expensive and hard-to-refine heavy oil forever. One day China will produce a billion solar and wind power units and therein have the capacity to wean itself from fossil fuels.

Thank you Jean for an excellent comment. Growing up in the 50s and 60s and 70s with an extended United nations family in a Wonder Bread western city has also leant me a modicum of perspective. I am very happy to plunge into the multi-hued crowds of Vancouver and inner city TO and Montreal today.

Business and innovation for attracting and sustaining business innovation, dollars:

If we look the higher concentration of over 8 uniersities with over 8-10,000 students each) major, large Canadian universities in southern Ontario with McGill next door in Quebec, some with leadership research and innovation internationally in technology, medicine, economics and the incredible opportunities for innovation and spin-offs to company start-ups, Toronto is far better positioned to draw upon permanent and commuter people intelligence within 300 kms. or less. Its more extensive regional transportation systems makes it cheaper to suck in more in-person talent /skilled people on a demand / temporary basis vs. Metro Vancouver.

Sure, remote / virtual collaboration in business gets more done via Internet, but still people may not reveal stuff to you in much detail virtually vs. across the coffee table in person. Not even by email much, if it’s brainstorming for complex problem-solving or business envisioning.

Will any Swiss city get knocked off the list.. when there are Swiss tax advantages? Same for Dublin….I understand Ireland was trying to be corporate tax friendly a few years ago.

Ah, well this is just 1 rating system and temporary for now.

Much focus has been on Vancouver’s undeniable beauty, urban design. However, a city’s social-economic resilence needs to be considered within “liveability” with how well locals across social-economic classes, interact with one another in a healthy /civil way and mechanisms to foster cooperation that makes it attractive place to live, do business and for tourism. (Witness the riots in Paris a few years of some disaffected, unemployed locals some of who had immigrant/refugee roots in Middle East, Africa,,etc. Not surprising.) Quite different reasons from post-Olympic riot in downtown Vancouver which bewildered, surprised many locals.

More good comments. However, one has to acknowledge that BC’s economy is well diversified and stable despite commodity price volatility. Albertans are now flowing to BC for work. Who would have predicted this five years ago?

There’s a cartoon that has stuck in my mind where a New Yorker says to an Angeleno: F..k you, but he’s thinking: Have a nice day. The Angeleno says: Have a nice day, but he’s thinking: F..k you. I think Vancouver is more of the latter.

Dominique Laferriere wrote that cities have a sex – that Montreal was female. Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, strike me as being male. Vancouver? Maybe transgender. If it were anthropomorphized it would be a greedy business man, as reflected in the city motto: By Sea, Land, and Air We Prosper; quite unlike Toronto’s: Diversity: Our Strength.

It’s illuminating to look at the slogans of some of the other reputable cities on the list. Top spot Sydney has: I take but I surrender. Sounds like submission/dominance. Stockholm’s is the lamest: The Capital of Scandinavia – which annoys the Norwegians. Denmark’s is the airy fairiest: Wonderful Denmark. Edinburgh’s is: Nisi Dominus Frustra – which translates as: We deep-fry everything.

After living in Vancouver (and still go back as 2nd home), now being in Calgary, it most definitely is male in spirit —-even though some locals wish for and work slowly beyond a different “spirit” beyond Stampede yahoos / urban cowboy sensibility, Calgary Flames hockey town boosters, even cuisine preference/ availability tends to be beef (Alberta beef is genuninely good and copious choices in stores), poutine, bison, etc. It must be far colder, snowier winters in the prairies. Calgary is not a “gentle” place. It feels like an older teenager, looking for ideas, restrained in innovation because it’s tough to shake off parental oil-gas dependency.

I lived,, biked and worked in Toronto for over 20 years. For certain, Canada;’s financial powerhouse ..is Toronto– all national headquarters for global finance, law…are there.

With the national headquarters and global finance naturally flow the marketing and other departments, which need the writers, designers, publishers and other creatives in the advertising and media sphere, as well as you say, law, with the concurrent research and regulatory departments, accountants, printers, etc., etc.